Advocates,
which include most in the educational reform movement, say that the
U.S. education system desperately needs more consistency from state to
state, not to mention higher and clearer standards. Opponents -- which
the Heritage Foundation and some, if not many, local educators -- say it's an undermining of states' rights and local control.

But even beyond the debate over the concept, there is this: Will it work?

Will a common curriculum nationwide improve educational outcomes?

It
all depends on implementation, panelists agreed during a discussion of
the common core at the annual convention of the Education Writers
Association, which is being held this week in Philadelphia.

And key to that implementation is intensive professional development and coaching of teachers, panelists said.

"Setting
standards is the easy part," said Cherry Boyles, instructional
supervisor for Washington County Schools in Springfield, Ky.

That
just "starts the conversation," she said. "The hard part is
implementation. ... If the goal is to change instructional standards,
than you have to change how you teach, how you assess. You have to
improve how you provide feedback to instructors."

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Andrew Porter,
an educator professor with the University of Pennsylvania, agreed,
saying that research shows there's no correlation now between state
standards and educational outcome.

California is cited as an example as a state with high standards and low outcomes.

Kathleen
Porter-Magee, senior director of the High Quality Standards Program at
the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said that's really about a failure in
implementation.

"Even in states with great standards now, not all students are meeting those goals." Porter-Magee said. "As a nation, we have not implemented standards well.

"Common
core standards gives us a chance to reboot, to have conversations about
what has failed in the past and what we need to change," she said.

Delaware
Gov. Jack Markell said that one needed change is making have fewer, but
clearer and higher standards -- and linking those standards to college
and career readiness.

Another needed reform is for states to
improve their assessment systems, so that the results are provided in a
more timely and useful fashion. Annual assessments "are interesting but
not all that helpful" in terms of providing data that allows districts
and individual teachers to adjust their instruction. He advocates moving
to shorter, more frequent assessment that offer more real-time
information to schools.

Markell also agreed that teacher training and support is critical.

"Unless
you pair the right standards with the right professional development
with the right materials and provide the right feedback, it won't work,"
he said.

Porter said it's also important to set a higher bar in
the new standards -- "but not so high that districts dismiss it as
impossible."

He used an analogy of coaxing a donkey to move by
dangling a carrot a few feet in front of him. "If you dangle that carrot
a mile away, I don't think the donkey is going to do anything," Porter
said.

The strategy should be, Porter said, to set new academic goals, master those goals and then set a new, higher set of goals.